As smart homes are becoming more and more de rigueur, Instructables user skorpyon1992 created a timely project, the FPiDroid House. This project is still in beta testing, but has shown a lot of potential so far. By using the Nexys 3 (or any of our FPGA boards), you too could connect a lot of your devices to monitor and control your very own smart home.
I recently published an Instructable on how to use I2C in LabVIEW using LabVIEW MakerHub LINX, chipKIT WF32, and PmodGYRO as an example. Digilent sells a both LabVIEW Home Bundle and chipKIT WF32 in the LabVIEW Physical Computing Kit. In this Instructable, I go over how to read the data sheet to find what you’re looking for and how exactly to code what you find. This guide also details how to set up pull-up resistors for successful I2C communication.
As you may have surmised from Jesse’s post earlier, we have a new product, the fantastic Nexys Video! To learn more, I talked to Sam Bobrowicz, one of the people at Digilent who worked very hard to get this product released.
When perusing our site, you’ve probably noticed the section entitled programming solutions, or looked through our FPGA (field programmable gate array) boards and seen the acronym JTAG (Joint Test Action Group). …
A little while ago, you likely saw the post that I did on my Color Invaders project. It’s a lot of fun to play as is, but it was suggested that the game could be made even better if there were some sound effects included as well. I got it done with a few tweaks…
By now, you’re probably familiar with the ZYBO board. You’ve seen the ZYBOt, a tutorial for using embedded Linux with ZYBO, and how to tweet webcam photos with a ZYBO. Thanks to one intrepid Instructables user, you can now learn how to make a digital oscilloscope with a ZYBO.
I was recently inspired to try out by Hamster’s own Colour Invaders project. As the name suggests, this project is similar in design to the classic Space Invaders game or (more similarly) the Casio’s Number Invaders on the calculator. The idea behind the game is that different colored “invaders” start marching down the LED strip and you have to fire missiles that match the color of the oncoming invader. Naturally, as you successfully destroy more of the attackers, the faster they come towards your base. Here is what you need to get started.
As most of you know, we have our own Forum where anybody can go post questions and projects involving Digilent products: FPGAs, microcontrollers, any of our scopes, National Instruments products like the LabVIEW Home Bundle, Pmods, programming solutions, you name it. With this wide variety of products and an even wider variety of potential questions, the Forum can be a little daunting to navigate. This post will help first-time Digilent Forum users get the best experience out of the Digilent Forum.
We recently published a video about a simple Theremin built using the Analog Discovery and the Analog Parts Kit. A Theremin is an electronic musical instrument which essentially turns the user into a variable capacitor. The user can then adjust the frequency of the sound produced by the instrument by moving their hand in relation to an antenna. As the distance to the antenna changes, the capacitance also changes, thus changing the signal frequency. In the Theremin showcased in this video, a recycled soda can is used as the antenna.
Digilent Adept is a light-weight program that allows users to quickly load .bit files onto your FPGA chip. The Power of Adept is in its simplicity and speed.
Dharsan, a new Digilent intern, used the LabVIEW Home Bundle and the NI myRIO to create a circuit that controls the speed of a fan based on a temperature reading.
This is a continuation of previous blogs about logic gates. Earlier you read about logic gates and their functions. Then you read about how to code logic gates in Verilog, VHDL, and C. Now its time to learn about creating logic gates with transistors. After reading all of these posts you’ll have learned about logic gate theory, coding logic gates in both hardware and software, and the physical hardware design of logic gates.
Using a data acquisition device (DAQ) can be challenging. Often, connecting to a single channel produces a suitable measurement. Yet, DAQs seldom have a single channel; trouble usually happens when …
In a recent forum post, community member Denspa asked a great question: “Can I use two different Analog Discovery units together to increase the number of analog channels available for …
SPICE simulations are the tool of choice for engineers when designing analog or mixed-signal circuits. Multisim Live from Digilent as browser-based simulator makes this task easy and with the Analog …
The Department of Electronic Engineering at Royal Holloway, University of London, sought to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its undergraduate laboratory experience. By integrating the Digilent Analog Discovery Studio …